


Lay down (on the cold ground)

by Yukichouji



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Death of a Small Child, Death of minor characters, Jim is not happy, M/M, No Spoilers, Sad, Why the heck does the 'Jim is not happy' tag keep spelling 'Jim' with a capital 'i'??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 05:05:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10780155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yukichouji/pseuds/Yukichouji
Summary: Gotham always takes too much.





	Lay down (on the cold ground)

**Author's Note:**

> This is unbeta'd, so be warned.  
> It's also sad, just in case the tags didn't give that away...

His breath puffs foggy white clouds into the chill of the night and he stands there, bathed in a pool of matted yellow light, and watches them rise and swirl until they dissolve before the ink-black sky overhead.

 

There’s blood on his shirtsleeve and on his face but the biting cold has numbed away the pain, same as it’s chewed the feeling out of his fingers and toes. His jacket is still inside somewhere, but he can’t make himself go back to retrieve it.

 

He feels numb all over.

 

The night is unexpectedly quiet, almost surreal under its thin, gray sheet of freshly fallen snow.

 

Harvey comes bumbling up the sidewalk from the direction of their parked car, a tattered old coat in his hands and muttering something under his breath. When he reaches Jim, he shakes out the coat and drapes it over Jim’s shoulders like a stained, sorry cape with lines of unraveling thread at the hem, sewer-brown in the glare of the streetlight. It smells like Harvey’s trunk, like motor oil and mothballs and mold, though somewhere in there is the faint whiff of booze and Harvey’s cheap cologne and Jim can’t bring himself to care.

 

Harvey’s hands are rough as he tucks the lapels together over Jim’s chest.

 

“I called it in. They’re sending an ambulance. And a squad car to secure the scene until the coroner gets here. Might be a while. This time of night he’s usually passed out drunk on his couch.” Harvey’s voice sounds muffled, like it’s crossing a great distance, even though he’s standing right in front of Jim. “Come on, for God’s sake. If you keep standing here the medics are gonna have ta thaw you before they can treat you. Jesus.”

 

Sliding a hand onto the small of Jim’s back, warm even through the multiple layers of fabric, Harvey makes to guide him along, but Jim sets his feet and shakes his head no. They can’t leave the crime scene unattended.

 

He can’t leave.

 

“You know you can’t save everyone, right?” Harvey says, still angry, although the heat of it is slowly seeping out of him and Jim can hear something old and sad and tired underneath, well worn and mostly hidden. “You almost died in there today. I know it’s kind of your thing and all, but you can’t keep throwing yourself to the wolves whenever it gets rough. One day I might not be there to drag your sorry ass out of dodge. And what then, huh?”

 

There’s nothing Jim can say to that so he keeps quiet, watches Harvey huff steam from his nostrils and from his mouth, the tip of his nose red from the cold instead of the drink for a change. Harvey sighs, defeated, and so they stand next to each other in the lonely glare of the streetlight, waiting.

 

“Kids are always the worst.” Harvey says, low and quiet, just for Jim. “You never really get used to those.”

 

“Yeah.” Jim mumbles, because he can’t think of anything better. His head feels hollow, empty.

 

You’d expect a more dramatic setup for something like this, Jim thinks, screaming and crying and chaos. Not three bodies in a dark apartment and nothing but the quiet, vicious cold outside.

 

It had started with a follow up on a witness for their current case and ended, five hours later, with their guy dead, a bullet hole in his chest. But only after he’d cut first his wife’s throat and then that of his three year old son. Hadn’t seen reason no matter how much Jim had talked and begged and pleaded and now it feels like there are no more words left in him.

 

If Harvey hadn’t gotten to his ankle piece while Jim was busy getting the shit kicked out of him they’d probably both be just another set of bodies in that apartment. Their blood mixing with that of two more innocents lost to this place’s unrelenting darkness, seeping into the old floorboards and rotting away at the foundation until it crumbled and caved and swallowed them up, no-one the wiser.

 

It’s this city, Jim thinks, it eats away at its people like nothing Jim has seen before, sucks at their souls until they’re drained dry and empty and have nothing more to give. This is a place where the good shrink back from the light and cower helplessly in the shadows while evil’s grotesque face walks proudly in the sun.

 

Jim shoves his hands into his armpits underneath his borrowed coat to keep some warmth in them, but the winter night is unrelenting and bitter and it creeps into his skin like poison.

 

The ambulance arrives first, then the squad car and a good while later, finally, the hearse. Jim lets the medic poke at his ribs, clean up his face and patch up his arm – cut’s shallow, no stitches needed, lucky – and doesn’t move away from his vigil until the last gurney has been rolled out, the figure on it nothing more but a bump in the almost comically over-sized black body bag.

 

By the time it’s all over Jim doesn’t even feel the cold anymore.

 

He lets Harvey lead him away then, drops into the passenger seat wordlessly when Harvey opens the door for him and says, “Come on, I’m taking you home. Paperwork can wait until tomorrow.”

 

Harvey’s fingers tap a nervous, restless rhythm against the steering wheel over the hum of the engine and the crunch of dirty, half-frozen slush beneath their tires.

 

They’re halfway to Jim’s apartment when Harvey breaks.

 

“Ah, fuck. Forget it.” Harvey straightens his back in the driver’s seat and furrows his brows decisively. “I’m not dropping you off at your place. It’s cold and dark and shitty in there. No-one should come home to that and be alone after the kind of day we had. We’re going to my apartment. There’s plenty of beer in the fridge and Antonio’s delivers 24/7.”

 

“Beer and pizza?” Jim asks and pries his eyes away from the empty sky sluggishly for a moment so that he can glance over.

 

“Beer and pizza.” Harvey answers with too much determination, as though Jim isn’t the only one he’s trying to convince.

 

Harvey’s apartment is just as cold and just as empty as Jim’s but at least the heater is quicker to start up and there’s the promise of food and alcohol and a small break in the constant weave of loneliness Jim has gathered around himself so securely.

 

They get around to neither eating nor drinking.

 

As soon as the door’s shut behind them Harvey hauls Jim close and crushes their mouths together in an artless kiss, all tongue and teeth and groaning desperation. Jim lets himself fall into it, the taste and touch of Harvey, the scent of sweat and too sharp cologne, the bitter hints of coffee and bourbon, the coarse scrape of a beard against Jim’s skin, and something inside of him cracks open.

 

Where he’d been still before, he can’t stop shaking now and he clings too tightly as Harvey leads them into the bedroom. The edge of the mattress knocks against the backs of his knees and he falls onto it, taking Harvey with him, limbs tangling and fresh bruises jarred.

 

Jim hurts too much, on the surface and below, to leave room for anything much else but the way Harvey tears at his clothes is good and the way Harvey fucks him – all rough hands and soft lips and the thrust of his hips harsh enough to knock the breath right out of Jim’s lungs – is even better.

 

Harvey fills him up and wraps around him and Jim will never be able to pretend like he’s not completely overwhelmed by all of it, like he doesn’t feel as though he’s losing himself and everything attached to that each time it happens.

 

He gasps and pants and sucks Harvey’s breath into his lungs as though he can pull more of Harvey into himself and maybe that’s too much need, not enough give but Jim doesn’t care. Not when his chest feels like it’s filled up with shards of broken glass that cut into him every time he moves.

 

It’s too intense when he finally comes, too intimate and too open, like a puncture wound, and it doesn’t take Harvey long to follow him over the edge.

 

He lets Harvey hold him close after, beneath the covers with his nose crushed against the crook of Harvey’s neck, and tries to find a way to breath that doesn’t hurt.

 

Outside the night is cold and unforgiving and up above the sky hangs completely empty. No stars and no moon tonight. Just a vast, endless sheet of darkness that stretches across the horizon and engulfs Gotham like the inside of a giant’s maw, a city and all of its occupants ready to be swallowed and disintegrated.

 

And maybe some part of Jim, deep down and secret, is waiting for it to happen, welcoming the thought of disappearing, of fading out and leaving this nightmare of a place behind to take care of itself. He’s already given it everything he knows how to and he feels nothing but tired so often these days, bone deep, and what’s the weight of his life in the end, if he’s not the one who has to carry it anymore?

 

“Hey.” Harvey shifts and brushes his hand through Jim’s hair, the pads of his fingers coarse against Jim’s scalp. “Stop thinking. You’re giving me a headache.”

 

Jim sighs, lets his eyes drift closed and tries to shut the world out for just a little while.

 

“That’s it. Get some sleep. Things’ll look different tomorrow. Maybe not better, but different at least.”

 

Yeah, Jim thinks, that’s a start. If he tries hard enough, he can almost even believe it.


End file.
